Food and Nutrition

Almost a year and a half ago, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack outlined USDA’s focus on nutrition security, which builds on food security by emphasizing the co-existence of food insecurity and diet-related diseases and disparities. Put simply, nutrition security means having consistent and...

The 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s work continues! The committee will hold its third meeting September 12-13, 2023. The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) invite the public to participate in this important event via live webcast. Registration is...

Cindy Long, Administrator, USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), and Regional FNS leadership visited New Mexico last month to recognize several FNS nutrition assistance programs in action and learn how FNS can support their work. Advancing nutrition security is a key priority of the Biden-Harris...

Bringing together local producers and schools was the objective of the “ Bringing the Farm to School” producer training in Hardin, Montana. The training sought to build relationships between schools and producers to increase the availability of local foods served to children. USDA Farm to School...

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides nutrition support to millions of American families in need. USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) works with partner states to ensure that SNAP provides the right amount of benefits to eligible families in the prescribed timeframes.

Connecting Kids to Meals, known as CKM, is a nonprofit agency in Toledo, Ohio that provides healthy meals at no cost to at-risk kids in low-income and underserved areas of Northwest Ohio. With a nearly 20-year history of feeding hungry kids, the critical work of CKM becomes more important every day.

One of my favorite activities is to see FNS programs in action. Therefore, as often as I can, I try to visit schools that know how to have fun while feeding kids healthy meals. Recently, I had the chance to visit Rialto Unified School District (RUSD) and learn about their success in doing just that...

Most Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants who can work already do. SNAP’s food assistance benefits are critical to helping these workers put food on the table as the jobs they hold often pay low wages, offer unreliable hours, and don’t provide benefits like paid sick leave...

Can you imagine a day when healthcare is mostly proactive as opposed to reactive? Imagine if everyone has access to the vital conditions for health and wellbeing: the factors that people depend on to reach their full potential. What does that future look like?

WIC is one of the most powerful, evidence-based public health programs, setting moms, babies, and young kids up to be healthy and thrive. The program is associated with incredible outcomes like improved diet quality, birth weights, and cognitive development, and reduced infant deaths, premature...